Netflix's Like FatherReview

Starring Kristen Bell and Kelsey Grammer, Netflix's Like Father, from writer/director Lauren Miller Rogen, continues the streaming service's massive movement to bombard us with dozens of Originals each month...that are just okay. Big names, credible talent, and adequate budgets all in service of a project that's perfectly unsurprising and mediocre.

Like Father actually contains some decent moments of dramatic heft, and solid performances from both Bell and Grammer as an estranged daughter and father, but it's trapped inside a very oddball rom-com shell. So underneath there's this meditative Garden State-style heart but the story has to follow bubble gum beats, leaping off from the loopy logline "Bride ditched at the alter, accidentally takes her deadbeat dad on her honeymoon" Whaaat? [record scratch] And people mistakenly think they're newlyweds? Whaaat?

Naturally, Rachel and Harry bond over the course of this Caribbean cruise, forgiving and forgetting and discovering who they each are as people. And there's nothing wrong with a story that's familiar. Like Father, unfortunately, is desperately dry. It offers nothing new save for almost 90 minutes of luxury cruise liner activity montages.

Netflix Spotlight: August 2018

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VOLTRON LEGENDARY DEFENDER: SEASON 7 (Available 8/10/18)
After saving Shiro and defeating Lotor, the Paladins are finally able to set a course for Earth. After a perilous journey, they discover that their home planet is not how they left it.

01 OF 11

VOLTRON LEGENDARY DEFENDER: SEASON 7 (Available 8/10/18)
After saving Shiro and defeating Lotor, the Paladins are finally able to set a course for Earth. After a perilous journey, they discover that their home planet is not how they left it.

Netflix Spotlight: August 2018

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Again, the fact that this film is wholly unspectacular just adds more kindle to the fire of the Netflix values "quantity over quality." They'll give us 20 new movies a month, featuring actors we enjoy and creators we admire, but it's all half-cooked. None of it moves the needle. They're movies to doze off to. Like Father is a "nice" watch and it feels like a project that never had to submit an actual screenplay for approval.

The most egregious, and occasionally insulting, rom-com sin here is that Rachel, who works at an ad firm and is trying to land a "big account" (textbook), is a workaholic who's always on her phone. She's not living life, you see. Oh boy. The cardinal sin of those with a career. The phone. And yes, an easily predictable turning poignant in the story is when she decides not to take said phone with her somewhere. It's a truly low-hanging left turn.

When Bell and Grammer, as a young woman and the dad who abandoned her when she was 5, have to dig in and deliver the tears, the story's able to briefly escape some of the cliches while wrangling up some old fashioned pathos, but for the most part this entire tale is a giant "cat's in the cradle" Royal Caribbean spot.

Summer TV 2018: 22 Shows We're Excited For

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POSE (FX) - Premieres Sunday, June 3rd
From Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk (Glee, American Horror Story) comes a new dance/musical series set in 1986 that explores the juxtaposition of several segments of life and society in New York: the ball culture world, the rise of the luxury Trump-era universe and the downtown social and literary scene. MJ Rodriguez, Evan Peters, Kate Mara, James Van Der Beek, Dominique Jackson, and Billy Porter star.

01 OF 22

POSE (FX) - Premieres Sunday, June 3rd
From Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk (Glee, American Horror Story) comes a new dance/musical series set in 1986 that explores the juxtaposition of several segments of life and society in New York: the ball culture world, the rise of the luxury Trump-era universe and the downtown social and literary scene. MJ Rodriguez, Evan Peters, Kate Mara, James Van Der Beek, Dominique Jackson, and Billy Porter star.

Summer TV 2018: 22 Shows We're Excited For

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Rachel gets lectured her nosy and chatty on-board dining companions, featuring a who's who of typical rom-com best friend types during which she's told that people with phones and ambition and drive are bad. It stings the most coming from Harry, who's basically made her the way she is by walking out on her decades earlier. "She's relating to us like a human," one of them says after Rachel turned some big corners (i.e. stopped looking at her phone).

Lauren Miller Rogen's husband, Seth Rogen, plays an amiable supporting role here as a friendly Canadian teacher who takes a romantic liking to Rachel during the vacation, but the joke here is supposed to be the un-raunching of Rogen. The only real chuckle in the midst of the madcap malaise is a meta one where Rogen's Jeff refuses some weed.

The Verdict

I'm not sure who first had the idea to fit a father/daughter drama into a rom-com casing but the result is very weird and very unfulfilling. Tonal whiplash is the least of Like Father's problems though as it basically furthers the messaging that Netflix likes to have talented people make unexceptional films.